Professor Neil Poulter

Professor Neil Poulter qualified at St Mary’s Hospital, London, in 1974, following which he trained in General Medicine. He then spent 5 years in Kenya co-ordinating a collaborative hypertension research programme at the Wellcome Trust Research Laboratories in Nairobi. On his return to the UK in 1985 he gained an MSc in Epidemiology with distinction at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Following this he was Co-PI of the WHO Oral Contraceptive case-control Study at University College London Medical School. In 1997 he was appointed Professor of Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine at Imperial College London, where he is currently co-Director of the International Centre for Circulatory Health and Director of the Imperial Clinical Trials Unit. He is an Honorary Consultant Physician and Epidemiologist at the Peart-Rose (CVD Prevention) Clinic based at Hammersmith Hospital, London, where he is actively involved in the treatment of patients with hypertension and related problems. He was President of the British Hypertension Society from 2003-2005 and is the immediate Past-President of the International Society of Hypertension. In 2008, he was elected as one of the Inaugural Senior Investigators of the NIHR and also elected as a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2009. He has contributed chapters to several major textbooks and published over 460 papers in peer-reviewed medical journals, including co-authoring several sets of national and international guidelines. Professor Poulter is among the top 1% most cited academics in clinical medicine as reported in the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher 2014 report. He has played a senior management role in several international trials including the ASCOT, ADVANCE, EXSCEL, DEVOTE and LEADER trials; other research activities include the optimal investigation and management of essential hypertension and dyslipidaemia; the association between birth weight and various cardiovascular risk factors; the cardiovascular effects of exogenous oestrogen and progesterone; the prevention and aetiology of type 2 diabetes and abdominal aortic aneurism; and ethnic differences in cardiovascular disease.